Archive for August, 2015

After one of the toughest weeks I can remember in the Verizon IndyCar Series, it was fitting that the championship finished the way it did. I’ll go ahead and get my gloating out of the way. Over three weeks ago, when we did our most recent One Take Only with Paul Dalbey as a guest – we gave our picks for the championship. Paul picked Juan Montoya to win the championship, John picked Graham Rahal and I chose Scott Dixon. My logic was that Rahal would fade, Montoya and Power had not been on the podium since May and Scott Dixon would do what he always does – drive cleanly, stay up front and let the others make the mistakes. That’s exactly how it played out.

Hearts will be heavy as the Verizon IndyCar Series heads west to Sonoma for the season finale. Drivers, teams and fans won’t have near the enthusiasm for the battle for the championship as they normally would. But by today’s first practice, the heartbreak will be temporarily set aside in order to focus on the business at hand.

Monday night, the news was confirmed. It was the news we had all been dreading since late Sunday afternoon. We hoped and prayed that Justin Wilson would somehow beat the odds that were stacked against him, but it was not to be. Justin Wilson succumbed to the injuries he suffered at Pocono Raceway one day earlier.

Throughout most of yesterday’s IndyCar race at Pocono Raceway, I was compiling notes for my usual “Random Thoughts” posts that I always write for the Monday immediately following a race. While there are a lot of observations about each race and the underlying storylines – there are also a lot of snarky and tongue-in-cheek opinions stated in those writings.

Those that have said they want to attend a Verizon IndyCar Series race at Pocono Raceway sometime, should probably head there this weekend. Conventional wisdom says that this could very well be the final year that the series will be there for quite a long period of time.

Who remembers the hand-wringing that went on after the opening race at St. Petersburg? Team Penske swept the first four positions in qualifying and took four of the top five finishing positions in the race, including the top two spots on the podium. Third place went to Chip Ganassi Racing’s Tony Kanaan. For the two weeks that led up to the next race at New Orleans, all we heard was how boring this season would be with Team Penske winning everything, with their only threat coming from Ganassi.

There is actually a significant racing connotation here, so please bear with me. Most regular readers of this site probably remember last fall when I had to put my thirteen year-old lab down. In fact, yesterday was ten months to the day that we lost our friend “Luckey”.

Flickr Photos

When Alexander Rossi played some shenanigans with the start of the Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio a couple of weeks ago, many fans and a few drivers thought it was a dirty move. As the pole-sitter, Rossi had control of the field as they approached the starting line. By slowing down significantly and making everyone […]